Design and Construction of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Retaining Structures
Online
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Oct 30, 2025
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Course Code: 1004-WEB25
- Overview
- Syllabus
- Instructor
Overview
After participating in this course, you will be able to:
- Recognize potential MSE wall applications for transportation facilities
- Understand the primary design considerations and select appropriate parameters for the design
- To be able to check contractor-submitted designs for MSE walls
- Select appropriate specification and contracting methods
- Identify appropriate construction inspection activities to confirm compliance with the design
Description
The design, construction and long-term stability monitoring of MSE walls continues to evolve as designers, researchers, and specifiers push the leading edge of the technology and use more advanced geosynthetic materials and systems. MSE walls represent more than half of all retaining walls used for transportation applications. MSE walls offer some fairly significant advantages for constructing transportation infrastructure. They are used to reduce or eliminate the need to improve poor foundations where piles, caissons or other soil stabilization techniques would be required for conventional reinforced concrete retaining walls. They are most commonly used as cost-effective solutions where the cost of fill, right-of-way or other restrictions require a steeper slope than is practically possible.
Many types of MSE wall types are categorized by the geometry of the reinforcement, the mechanism used to transfer stress, the type of reinforcement material (metallic or non-metallic) and the type aand geometry of the wall facing. This webinar provides a basic understanding of the type of MSE walls, their primary uses, key factors in their design and lessons learned from construction. A series of case studies provide the good the bad and the ugly experiences with the use of MSE walls, along with key lessons learned for their long-term success.
Who Should Attend
- Engineers involved in MSE wall design, construction and maintenance
- Provincial/State DOT and municipal agency personnel who specify MSE walls
- Specifiers and manufacturers of earth-retaining structures
- Contractors interested in advancing the state of MSE construction technology
Time: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Eastern Time
Please note: You can check other time zones here.
Syllabus
Course Outline
This course covers:
- History of the development of MSE walls
- Advantages of MSE walls compared to conventional retaining walls
- Overview of MSE systems, types and applications
- MSE wall design elements
- Construction sequencing
- Examples of performance issues
Instructor

David is a consulting Civil Engineer with over 38 years of experience in designing, evaluating and managing transportation infrastructure. He is the past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers Transportation and Development Institute (ASCE T&DI), chair of the Workforce Development and Codes and Standards Councils and chair of 5 engineering standards committees. He is a long-term member of the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC), Past-Chair of the pavements committee and member of the Soils and Materials and Asset Management Committees.
He is also a member of the Workforce Development Council and Chair of the Professional Development Committee. He is also a past member of the Transportation Research Board pavement management, pavement maintenance and pavement preservation committees. He has represented Canada on the World Road Association (WRA) pavements and asset management committees since 2002 and is currently the Chair of the Canadian National Committee to the WRA. He recently stepped down after 10 years as Executive Director of the Falling Weight Deflectometer User Group.
He has been involved in numerous national and international research, evaluation and asset management projects for Federal, State, Provincial and Municipal agencies and many of the public/private/ partnership highway construction projects across Canada and the United States.

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Fee & Credits
$75 + taxes
- 0.1 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
- 1 Continuing Professional Development Hours (PDHs/CPDs)
- ECAA Annual Professional Development Points
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